IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA

No. 18–1911

Filed March 6, 2020

ADNAN SAHINOVIC,

Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,

Appellee.

On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals.

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Samantha J.

Gronewald, Judge.

An inmate seeks further review of the court of appeals’ affirmance of 

the denial of his application for postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.

Alexander Smith and Benjamin D. Bergmann of Parrish Kruidenier 

Dunn Boles Gribble Gentry Brown & Bergmann L.L.P., Des Moines, for 

appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven, Assistant 

Attorney General, for appellee.
2

MANSFIELD, Justice.

Iowa Code section 822.3 generally allows a defendant “three years 

from the date the conviction or decision is final or, in the event of an 

appeal, from the date the writ of procedendo is issued” to bring an action 

for postconviction relief. The question we must answer is whether a 

defendant who wishes to challenge his or her underlying conviction gets 

the benefit of a new three-year, postconviction-relief deadline when that

defendant is resentenced. We conclude the defendant does not. If the 

conviction itself remained final, then section 822.3’s time clock does not 

restart as to challenges to that conviction. Accordingly, we affirm the 

judgment of the district court and the decision of the court of appeals.

I. Facts and Procedural Background.

On July 5, 2011, Adnan Sahinovic pled guilty to second-degree 

robbery, a class “C” felony, and forgery, an aggravated misdemeanor. He 

was sentenced that day to concurrent terms of ten and two years for these 

offenses. Pursuant to Iowa Code section 902.12, Sahinovic was required 

to serve seven-tenths of his ten-year sentence on the robbery conviction 

before being eligible for parole.

Approximately two and a half years later, on January 29, 2014, 

Sahinovic moved for correction of an illegal sentence, alleging that his 

mandatory minimum sentence for robbery was illegal because he had been 

seventeen years old at the time he committed his crimes. See State v. Lyle, 

854 N.W.2d 378, 404 (Iowa 2014). On October 6, Sahinovic retained new 

counsel, who moved to recast his motion to correct illegal sentence as a 

petition for postconviction relief. The proposed petition sought to assert 

the additional argument that Sahinovic’s guilty plea counsel had failed to 
3

advise him of adverse immigration consequences.1 See Padilla v. 

Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 374, 130 S. Ct. 1473, 1486 (2010). Thus, the 

proposed petition would have challenged both Sahinovic’s guilty plea and 

his mandatory minimum sentence.

The district court denied Sahinovic’s motion to recast on 

December 1. The court concluded,

The defendant may pursue post-conviction relief at any 

time he otherwise has a right to and may raise any issues he 

otherwise has the right to raise in such a proceeding. 

However, he cannot “recast” his pro se motion [to correct an 

illegal sentence] “as a petition for post-conviction relief.” . . . 

Again, the defendant must, if he chooses, initiate and pursue 

post-conviction relief in a separate case.

On April 27, 2015, the court granted Sahinovic’s motion to correct 

his illegal sentence. The court noted that Sahinovic’s victim had been 

“dragged and pulled underneath defendant’s moving truck as she tried to 

escape” and “was lucky to escape serious injury or death.” Also, the 

defendant had “a prior juvenile court history for trafficking stolen 

weapons.” However, the court took note of Sahinovic’s alcoholic and 

abusive father, who had since been deported and had passed away. Most 

importantly, the court observed Sahinovic had been “a model inmate while 

in prison,” having been steadily employed and residing in the honor unit. 

Accordingly, the court resentenced Sahinovic to ten years in prison with 

immediate parole eligibility. At the same time, the court reiterated that it 

would not consider in that proceeding a challenge to Sahinovic’s plea.

On August 12, Sahinovic filed the present petition for postconviction 

relief. Proceedings were stayed while Sahinovic appealed the district 

court’s refusal to consider his guilty plea challenge as part of his earlier 

motion to correct an illegal sentence. On April 27, 2016, the court of 

 

1Sahinovic is a citizen of Croatia.
4

appeals affirmed the ruling on the illegal sentence motion, and procedendo 

issued on June 22. The district court’s stay of postconviction-relief 

proceedings was lifted.

The State then moved for summary judgment in the postconvictionrelief proceeding, relying on the three-year statute of limitations in Iowa 

Code section 822.3. The State’s motion urged that the limitations period 

for challenging Sahinovic’s convictions had commenced on July 5, 2011,

and expired three years later in 2014. Sahinovic resisted the motion, 

arguing that his April 27, 2015 resentencing restarted the clock for statute 

of limitations purposes.

The district court agreed with the State and dismissed the petition. 

It reasoned that Sahinovic’s April 27, 2015 resentencing “does not open 

the door for him to challenge events occurring on or before July 5, 2011 

and; therefore, his Petition is time-barred.”

Sahinovic appealed. We transferred the case to the court of appeals,

which affirmed the district court. Sahinovic applied for further review, and 

we granted his application.

II. Standard of Review.

“We review issues of statutory interpretation for correction of errors 

at law.” State v. Nall, 894 N.W.2d 514, 517 (Iowa 2017) (quoting Rhoades 

v. State, 848 N.W.2d 22, 26 (Iowa 2014)).

III. Legal Analysis.

This case requires us to parse the meaning of the third sentence of 

Iowa Code section 822.3, which establishes a general rule that 

postconviction-relief petitions “must be filed within three years from the 

date the conviction or decision is final or, in the event of an appeal, from 

the date the writ of procedendo is issued.” Iowa Code § 822.3 (2016). No 

one disputes that Sahinovic’s convictions for second-degree robbery and 
5

forgery originally became final on July 5, 2011. The question is whether 

the resentencing of Sahinovic in 2015, which did not affect his underlying 

convictions, started the clock running over again.

This statute of limitations was added by the general assembly in 

1984. See 1984 Iowa Acts ch. 1193, § 1 (codified then at Iowa Code 

§ 663A.3 (1985) and now at § 822.3); Brewer v. Iowa Dist. Ct., 395 N.W.2d 

841, 842 (Iowa 1986). Prior to that time, there was no deadline for filing 

postconviction-relief petitions.

“In interpreting a statute, we first consider the plain meaning of the 

relevant language, read in the context of the entire statute, to determine 

whether there is ambiguity.” State v. Doe, 903 N.W.2d 347, 351 (Iowa 

2017). The State reads “the date the conviction or decision is final” to refer 

to the date when the determination being challenged became final. That 

happened in 2011, and those convictions have never ceased to be final. 

Thus, in the State’s view, and that of the district court and court of 

appeals, the statute of limitations for Sahinovic to challenge his guilty plea 

ran out in 2014.

Sahinovic counters that a defendant’s convictions and sentences are 

one package and that it is not possible to appeal a conviction until a

sentence has been pronounced. That is true, but the statute uses the 

disjunctive phrase “conviction or decision,” rather than a conjunctive 

phrase like “conviction and sentence.” This suggests that our focus should 

be on the finality of the specific determination (or “decision”) being 

challenged, not the entire package.

Additionally, chapter 822 draws a clear distinction between 

conviction and sentence. See Iowa Code § 822.2 (using both terms); id.

§ 822.3 (same); id. § 822.4 (same); id. § 822.7 (same). “When the same 

term appears multiple times in the same statute, it should have the same 
6

meaning each time.” State v. Paye, 865 N.W.2d 1, 7 (Iowa 2015). Had the 

legislature wanted the term “conviction” in Iowa Code section 822.3 to 

mean both “conviction” and “sentence,” it would have said both 

“conviction” and “sentence,” consistent with the approach it followed

elsewhere in Iowa Code chapter 822. It is true that the third sentence of 

section 822.3 does not contain the word “sentence” at all, see Iowa Code 

§ 822.3, and that we allow postconviction-relief applications to challenge 

sentencing, see id. § 822.2(1)(a)–(c), but the term “decision” can logically 

include a sentence.2

Moreover, Sahinovic’s position could lead to odd results. See id.

§ 4.4(3) (setting forth a presumption that “[i]n enacting a statute . . . [a] 

just and reasonable result is intended”); id. § 4.6(5) (noting that when a 

statute is ambiguous, we should consider “[t]he consequences of a 

particular construction”).

Our criminal justice system treats sentencing and convictions 

differently. Illegal sentences may be corrected many years after the fact. 

Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.24(5)(a) (“The court may correct an illegal sentence at 

any time.”). It would be purely fortuitous for such a defendant now to 

receive a fresh opportunity to challenge his or her underlying convictions.

 

2This becomes particularly clear when one reviews the original 1984 amendment. 

It amended the statute (then Iowa Code § 663A.3) to read,

A proceeding is commenced by filing an application verified by the 

applicant with the clerk of the district court in which the conviction or 

sentence took place. However, if the applicant is seeking relief under

section 663A.2, subsection 6, the application shall be filed with the clerk 

of the court of the county in which the applicant is being confined. An 

application must be filed within three years from the date the conviction 

or decision is final or, in the event of an appeal, from the date the writ of 

procedendo is issued.

1984 Iowa Acts ch. 1193, § 1. Note that the phrase “conviction or sentence” is only one 

sentence away from the phrase “conviction or decision.”
7

Allowing convictions to be reopened for no other reason than the fact 

that the same defendant went through a resentencing would undermine 

the state’s “legitimate interest in preventing the litigation of stale claims.” 

Davis v. State, 443 N.W.2d 707, 710 (Iowa 1989) (upholding the 

constitutionality of the three-year statute). As we said in Davis,

One of the goals of our criminal justice system is to 

afford both the accused and the state fair and prompt trials, 

appeals and further proceedings to correct error. A legitimate 

concern is that the process also end within reasonable time 

limits.

Id.

Other jurisdictions have similarly held that a resentencing does not 

bring about a new limitations period for attacking a conviction. See Vallez 

v. Hartley, 305 F. App’x 505, 508 (10th Cir. 2008) (“We are aware of no 

authority suggesting that resentencing can restart the limitations period 

when the prisoner seeks to bring only claims challenging his original 

conviction, as Mr. Vallez attempts to do here.”); Bradley v. Turner,

No. 3:12–CV–1504, 2013 WL 1345667, at *17 (N.D. Ohio Feb. 11, 2013) 

(“Ohio courts . . . have determined that ‘the time limit for a postconviction 

relief petition runs from the original appeal of the conviction, and that a 

resentencing hearing does not restart the clock for postconviction relief 

purpose as to any claims attacking the underlying conviction.’ ” (quoting 

State v. Piesciuk, No. CA2009-10-251, 2010 WL 2653385, at *2 (Ohio Ct. 

App. July 6, 2010))); People v. Metcalf, 979 P.2d 581, 583 (Colo. App. 1999)

(“If we were to accept defendant’s position, any time a court modified a 

sentence . . . it would result in a new three-year window for the filing of 

collateral attacks on convictions under Crim. P. 35(c). We find no 

indication in the statutes or the rules that such a result was ever 

intended.”).
8

Sahinovic relies on our decision in Daughenbaugh v. State, 805 

N.W.2d 591 (Iowa 2011). In Daughenbaugh, the defendant, a pharmacist,

pled guilty to four charges relating to the handling of prescription drugs. 

Id. at 591–92. He received a deferred judgment. Id. at 592. Thereafter, 

he was notified he could no longer participate in Medicare, Medicaid, or 

other federal healthcare programs. Id. This rendered him “virtually 

unemployable as a pharmacist.” Id. At this point, the defendant filed an 

application for postconviction relief alleging ineffective assistance of 

counsel and challenging his guilty pleas. Id. The district court denied the 

application on the merits, and the defendant appealed. Id. at 593.

Not reaching the merits, we held instead that the defendant could 

not bring an application for postconviction relief. Id. at 598–99. Iowa Code 

section 822.2 authorizes the filing of an application by a person “who has 

been convicted of, or sentenced for, a public offense.” Iowa Code 

§ 822.2(1). However, we concluded that “convicted” as used in 

section 822.2 should be interpreted in its “strict legal sense.” 

Daughenbaugh, 805 N.W.2d at 598. The deferred judgment meant that no 

judgment of conviction had been entered, and therefore the defendant was 

not eligible for postconviction relief. Id. at 598–99.

We find Sahinovic’s reliance on Daughenbaugh unavailing because 

nothing we say here is inconsistent with Daughenbaugh. “Conviction” as 

used in Iowa Code chapter 822 means a conviction that has become final 

because a judgment was entered on it. That is what we said in 

Daughenbaugh and what we say today. We note that section 822.3 

requires the action to be filed “within three years from the date the 

conviction . . . is final.” Iowa Code § 822.3. This word choice implies, 

necessarily, that the term “conviction” refers to the kind of conviction that 

is final. Here the conviction became final in 2011, and that finality was 
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never disturbed simply because Sahinovic filed a motion to correct an

illegal sentence in 2014, and in response thereto, the district court 

amended his sentence in 2015.3

IV. Conclusion.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district 

court and the decision of the court of appeals.

AFFIRMED.

All justices concur except Wiggins and Oxley, JJ., who take no part.

 

3To be clear, it would be a different situation if a resentencing had been ordered 

as part of a direct appeal. In that event, we believe both the conviction and the sentence 

do not become final for Iowa Code section 822.3 purposes until the defendant is 

resentenced. However, where the defendant files either an application for postconviction 

relief resulting only in a resentencing or a motion to correct an illegal sentence resulting 

in a resentencing, the conviction has never ceased to be final and the section 822.3 clock 

does not restart.